


fly like a bird through the night

by emmaofmisthaven



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post season finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 23:57:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17110553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaofmisthaven/pseuds/emmaofmisthaven
Summary: “I’m fine,” he tells her before she can ask the question he reads in her eyes.Eyes that she rolls dramatically even as she moves closer to him. “Sure, you are.” A pause then, “You know you can talk to me, Wonder Bird.”(Dick and Donna, after Trigon.)





	fly like a bird through the night

**Author's Note:**

> my boy is hurting and I needed to fix it
> 
> obviously, don't ready before you watch the s1 finale, big spoilers ahead

Dick finds his way to the garden, to the tire swing on the tree. He tests the weight first, before he puts one foot on the tire and propels himself up. There is familiarity in the pull on his muscles as he climbs the rope until he can hang from the tree, upside down. If he closes his eyes and lets his body sway with the wind, he can almost pretend he’s back at the circus, high on a pole and ready to take a leap for a trapeze. His fingers ache for the pouch of talc powder at his hips, his feet for the soft slippers he used to wear around the circus.

“I know bats sleep upside down, but that’s taking it a bit too far.”

He opens his eyes to find an upside down version of Donna staring at him, pout of her lips and hands on her lips. Dick rolls his eyes, for good measure, before he grabs the rope with both his hands and flips himself around, before his legs slide easily inside the tire. He sits there, chin resting on his arms, folded on top of the tire. There is no denying Donna’s look of concern, now that he can see her the right way around.

“I’m fine,” he tells her before she can ask the question he reads in her eyes.

Eyes that she rolls dramatically even as she moves closer to him. “Sure, you are.” A pause then, “You know you can talk to me, Wonder Bird.”

He knows he can. Donna has always been his go-to person, ever since they met, much to Diana’s frustration when she had to drive him back home after he was sneaking into their place in the middle of the night to talk to Donna. He could tell her anything, and she would only mildly judge him for it, before giving him actual, proper, useful advice.

The problem isn’t that he doesn’t want to tell Donna. It’s that he doesn’t know how to put it into words, that storm inside his mind ever since they managed to defeat Trigon and to take the darkness from him. He feels hollowed out, exhausted, empty. Like Trigon took a piece of him when he died, and replaced it with something else, something less.

“He put these images inside my head… These memories that weren’t mine…” He stops, tongue against the inside of his cheek, looking for his words. Donna moves closer so she can folds her arms on the tire too, comforting in her closeness. “He gave me this life, and it was… good. It was very good but…”

“But it wasn’t real,” she finishes for him.

He shakes his head, then adds, “I was married to Dawn,” just to get a reaction out of her.

She snorts a tiny laugh, just like he expected, but doesn’t offer a snide comment, which is a surprise. Or maybe not. Donna is as sarcastic as they go, and she’s got her wits about her, but she isn’t mean – she would never kick him when he’s already on the ground. It gets easier then, knowing she’s taking this seriously.

“It looked like a fucking cereals commercial; the house and the swimming pool, and sending the kids to college, a good job, everything. The kind of life you hear about and you’re just like ‘this is too perfect, this can’t be real.’” He laughs then, the sound hollow and sad. “I had a kid, Donna. Tiny little thing who looked exactly like me, who thought I was his damn hero. I remember holding him when he was born, and teaching him to swim and to ride a bike, going to his school’s recital for Christmas. I know it was fake, but it felt so very, fucking real. My kid was real, Donna. Except he wasn’t.”

Trigon really was careful on the details with that little hallucination of his. The scenario only lasted two days at most, but his fake memories go deeper than that, too many and too precise to simply shrug them off as made-up. He can still smell the chlorine of his swimming pool, taste the dread on his tongue as he watched Kory die in front of him. The buzzing in his ears as his foot crushed Bruce’s ribs. The warm blood on his face. Everything, in details. Real. Almost. Not quite.

“You  just need to rest. Your brain is on overdrive.”

“It’s not that.” When he meets Donna’s eyes again, they are wide and full of worry. “It’s – I was _good_ at it. I was a good dad. Me, Donna!”

She smiles now, running a hand through his hair before she pushes his head away. Dick finds himself smiling despite himself too, because that’s Donna for you – she always manages to lift his spirits, to do exactly what Dick needs to get his head above water again. “You’re a shit boyfriend but you’re a good man. You’re good to Rachel.”

“Thanks. I guess?”

She flashes him a grin, before her smile grows softer once more. “What else?” she asks, and it’s so simple, so straight-forward. Dick had forgotten what it feels like, to have people actually care about you and what you have to say, instead of waiting for you to be done so they can talk too.

“It’s stupid.”

“With you, it always is. Doesn’t make it any less valid though.”

That’s Diana’s school of positive thinking right there, so powerful that it throws Dick off-balance for a hot second. It never fails to surprise him, how different his and Donna’s upbringing were, depending on who raised them. More than once through his teenage years, he’d wondered what would have happened, if Diana was the one to take him in. How different his life would have been, which live choices he would have made, where it would have led him.

Slightly less fucked up in the head, surely.

“I never thought about this as the perfect scenario to me, you know. It wasn’t a dream or a goal or anything. Mostly… Mostly because I don’t think I deserve it. The marriage and kids, the suburban life. It’s not for us.”

“You telling me all those years of whoring around were not to find the perfect Hallmark movie partner?” she jokes, and laughs out loud when Dick tries to kick his leg but only manages to swing around on the tire. It takes his balance and her holding to the tire to stop him. “Real talk, though. What we do, it’s not living. It’s surviving at best. And it’s not fair on us, but it doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. Who said you can’t be a vigilante and also have a family? Look at Diana, look at Clark. They managed alright. Just because Bruce is taking it one step too far, doesn’t mean you have to copy him. You’re better than that, Dick. You’ll figure it out.”

The way she says it, so certain and confident, it’s as if she is not letting any doubt settle inside his brain, not allowing fate to screw him over on that one. It’s as if she said it and it’s now set in stone, meant to happen. And, knowing Donna, she will force the universe to make it happen no matter what, just because she decided so. She’s stubborn like that.

“You think so?” he asks with a smile.

“I know so.” And then, with a wicked grin, “Plus, little mixed-race kids with green eyes would be so fucking cute!”

Dick’s cheek turn to fire, much to Donna’s delight. She laughs and laughs and laughs, even more so when he lets himself lean backward and away from her, and almost falls down the tire in the process. As if having a heart-to-heart with his almost-sister wasn’t hard enough as it is, now she’s going straight to the jugular and having fun doing so. He fucking hates her for that.

“I don’t hear any denial,” she singsongs.

“I’ve only known her for a week, can you fucking chill?” he grumbles back as he finds his balance on the tire again and so finds himself face to face with Donna again. She’s gloating big time now. “She probably doesn’t even care all that much about me anyway.”

Donna’s smile drops immediately. “Are you really that fucking stupid?” When Dick doesn’t reply, but instead raises his eyebrows, she adds, “She was ready to blow up half the county if it meant following you through Trigon’s protection shield. And it’s not Rachel’s name she screamed until she lost her voice, you moron.”

It shouldn’t warm his heart, twist his stomach, make him smile, have him panic. It shouldn’t, but it does, all at once. He knows he’s been stupid about this shit, about her. But he remembers her, in this hallucination universe, and him – always drawn back to her, no matter what, no matter how. Even with a demonic asshole forcing him into marrying someone else, Dick found his way back to Kory. That has to count for something, and perhaps he’s more of a soppy moron than he thought because. Well. Yeah.

“I really do like her, Donna.”

She looks so proud, and loving, that Dick want to make a joke of it. But she would turn it back on him in less than a second, and she’s insulted him enough already. Not to mention that he wants to cherish this moment, this confession. First step in the right direction, and he doesn’t want to forget about it.

“Good. Finally.” And then, with a smirk, “Wait until at least the second date before you tell her you want her babies though.”

“You fucking asshole,” he shots back, without heat.

Donna laughs and, grabbing the rope, propels herself up on the tire, her feet on each side of his knees. It’s enough to make them spin and swing, a mess of motions that has Dick grin too when she puts her weight into it and almost loses her balance.

“I’ll be a kick-ass aunt.”

Yeah. One day, she will be.


End file.
